A) Can we not get into history arguments? We are very aware of things past and present, thank you and we are trying to move on, not go back!
B) I thought the point of restrictions was to pressure for peace and to correct the situation, not to foster and nurture enmity for future generations for ever and ever and ever!
The Go federations are indeed representatives of their respective countries, but they are of much less impact than other federations and organisations and they shouldn’t be required to act as the EU parliament when the EU parliament itself applies its own sanctions “selectively”!
Yeah, only I didn’t make that assumption.
What I assumed (and clearly wrote) is that no player ever started Go to get involved in politics (regardless of definition), let alone have a panic attack over it.
If I have to explain that Go is a game/sport/hobby and that it is not worth having a panic attack over it, then what can I say? I admit I didn’t know what a “panic attack” was before a very good friend of mine had a couple of them, so if you happen to not know I urge you to check what a panic attack is and think if any of your hobbies is worth having one.
Putin still relies to some extent on public approval, but yes many of the sanctions imposed by government entities are targeted at people with economic power iiuc.
Yeah, and the call for Rusian Go players to either “burn their passport on a video” or “Иди нахуй!” helped those Go players to feel resentment towards their government how exactly?
Robert copied his email to me. In general I agree with him.
My view is simple:-
a) Initially I think there was a decision to allow Russian children to play online becaue of Covid. That is no longer the case as Czechia has removed all Covid retrictions. There is nothing medically to stop Russians travelling to Prague. This is a good reason for not allowing them to play online.
b) Mixed on-line/off-line tournaments are a bad idea. People do not spend lots of time and money to travel across Europe so that they can sit in front of a computer, when they could do the same at home. (Indeed, I recollect that, at the last EGF AGM, the Russian delegate said that they had tried a mixed online/offline tournament and it had not really worked.)
c) Making some games on-line introduces lots of problems:
i) how do you stop cheating?
ii) players in Prague may be using an unfamiliar computer, increasing the risk of misclicks. This gives the Russian an advantage.
iii) If players refuse to play against Russians, then what is the score? Is it 1-0 to the Russian (giving them an unjustified reward), or 0 - 0, or 0.5 - 0.5? It would be wrong for someone to win the tournament becasue others refuse to play against them.
d) There has been discussion about selection to the World Youth. In my opinion all players in the World Youth should represent a country; we have now said that Russians are not allowed to represent Russia (but must be neutral). Therefore Russians are not allowed to represent Europe at the WYGC.
e) the Ukranians have said that it is not possible for them to play online. If the Ukranians are not able to play online it seems unfair if the Russians are allowed to play.
f) I agree that we should try not to involve children in a political argument. The British Go Association is not giving any instructions to the UK entrants about playing against Russians. The best way to stop children being involved in a political argument is to prevent Russians from playing online.
g) In short, the only reaon for allowing Russia to play online is that we made a decision a few weeks ago. But things have changed: Czechia is not using Covid as a reason to forbid entry, and Russia has invaded Ukraine. I believe that these changes are a good justification for not letting people play online.
Toby.
(DeepL)
Greetings all,
In connection with the tense international situation and ambiguous attitude even to the Russian young players in go, to prevent possible conflicts and to protect all European children (first of all - Russians and Ukrainians) from possible moral traumas the RGF Executive Committee decided to refuse the Russian players in the upcoming European Youth Go Championship on the 10-12th of March, 2022.
We are shocked by the call of some national go associations’ officials for a demonstrative refusal to let some CHILDREN play with others only on the national ground. We demand that the EGF board take action against such actions.
We hope for your understanding,
Natalia Kovaleva.
Vice-President of Russian Go Federation
To no-one’s surprise, punitive measures don’t lead to peaceful resolutions.
We demand that the EGF board take action against such actions.
I predict that some people will take grave offense to Natalia using the word “demand”.
d) There has been discussion about selection to the World Youth. In my opinion all players in the World Youth should represent a country; we have now said that Russians are not allowed to represent Russia (but must be neutral). Therefore Russians are not allowed to represent Europe at the WYGC.
Is this guy a lawyer by any chance? “Let’s introduce a loophole so we can exploit it later.”
I admit I didn’t have this case in mind back when I was advocating that federations must put effort into finding viable solutions for online tournaments.
Online-proctored exams are a thing for a while now, including russia. I personally had to attend 3 work-related exams from home in the last 2 years and the online proctoring was done properly. I think there needs to be an established way of proctoring online go tournaments and I’m surprised there hasn’t been one developed yet given we’re now a hundred years into this covid stuff. At the end of the day there could be simply a list of requirements for setting up everything yourself, e.g. the camera behind your back capturing both you and the screen, the camera capturing your face in high quality, some ambient camera capturing the room, and the screen recording. I’m more than certain that the parents of the kids participating in all of this would’ve been able to provide them with all of that easily, especially considering that every person has a smartphone nowadays.
It is a concern and a valid reason, but I think that putting zero effort into resolving it is also wrong. That said it’s in line with the entire message that just tries to “logically explain” why russians can’t participate by putting forth some bizarre chains of conclusions leading up to the statements.
There is a long topic on this somewhere. I just remember that organization never answered me how to connect and save 2hrs of game on a smartphone and now you think of 3 cameras.
My conclusion was noone use a smartphone but a computer. I don’t have computer, and i don’t think i am the only one.
Well it doesn’t change the fact that they just had to put forth a list of requirements. If you can’t meet them then you can’t participate. But the requirements for an online proctored go game should be out there.
I can agree with that to a certain extent, but at the same time you have to admit it isn’t normal for a European Championship to be played under weird conditions like that. Everyone is supposed to be playing in the same environment, so that everyone is on an equal footing.
If I am not mistaken, until 2019 the EYGC was played in person. In 2020, the pandemic just began to strike. Davide Bernardis (U16, Italy) was allowed to play online, I don’t remember if it was the case for other participants. EYGC 2021 was entirely held online. For EYGC 2022, the initial plan (before Ukraine’s invasion) was to allow a limited number of Russians to participate online, because they couldn’t fly to Czechia due to the pandemic. They were supposed to play in the same room in St Petersburg. However this initial plan was abandoned because
a few players (or their parents or their coaches) don’t want to play against Russians
Most Ukrainians can’t fly to Czechia and can’t play online either, it would be considered as unfair if Russians can participate in the competition online.
“This guy” signs himself “Toby”. It seems most likely that it is Toby Manning, President of the BGA. He is a (retired?) electrical engineer.
If he was a lawyer, he might understand better what was wrong with making an executive decision to take this unconstitutional action with no consultation with the members, no notice to the members and no public announcement of the action. The first official mention of this matter on the BGA website was, to the best of my knowledge, yesterday’s (4 Mar) announcement of the result of the “emergency” meeting.
Some members will have been made aware of the action through the BGA-controlled open email list, Gotalk, when Andrew Simons (aka Überdude) drew attention to a copy of the letter leaked to reddit.
To give a more balanced view there, it seems that very few members objected much to the BGA council’s actions. (Most members probably don’t give a stuff what BGA Council does anyway!) It was pretty clear to me that the go organisations, just like other sporting organisations such as the IOC and FIDE, would have to take some action as a result of the war. The letter from the BGA was certainly not something I would have agreed with, but in the end it wasn’t that far away from what the EGF agreed with.
Some tried to argue that Putin was democratic, that if you listened to Russia Today you would see the truth about things, and that people like Navalny were impartial criminals. Extreme trolling. It’s pretty sad that Putin has taken us back to something which we haven’t seen since South Africa’s white supremacist days.
Not in the mood, bye. 